In the Classroom

Some of the lesson plans are actually units designed for a week or more of study. The site allows for printer-friendly versions of the plans to make printing them a neat option. When you need quick plans for the substitute--or if you are a substitute-- this site is a must-have.

Here is another wonderful website created by the Woodlands Junior School. This website is basically a compilation site for teachers. There are links and activities for math, science, special needs, history, geography, health, holidays, and many other subject areas. The website also offers many lesson plans - find the lesson plans by clicking on the subject. Note: The site is British, so beware of spelling differences! Most of the activities are interactive and require FLASH, get it from the TeachersFirst Toolbox page..

Have a high speed Internet connection? (Most schools do)The you MUST visit these 3D virtual tours of beautiful sites all over the world with your students. Read the Welcome message on the home page for directions and details, then explore the current features and several years of archives for 3D virtual tours from major world capitals to true "experiences" such as Times Square and white water rafting. Even the tour of a Banyan tree will amaze you. Bring the world into your classroom for geography, landforms, world cultures, foreign language study, or literary settings. Be in the midst of festivals or atop the Sydney Bridge. The site requires Quicktime. The Welcome section can help you troubleshoot. Or you can get Quicktime from the TeachersFirst Toolbox page.. Just be sure to share in full screen (high band) view , if you can! Click the FULL SCREEN QTVR FEATURE > ARCHIVE to find more choices. There is also a link to Arounder, a collection of European Capitals in 3D tours.

In the Classroom

Use a projector--or better yet, an interactive whiteboard--to take students atop the Eiffel Tower, to the high Sierras, or aboard a Mars explorer. Allow student to navigate on the whiteboard. Nte that Shift and Ctrl keys alow you to zoom, as well. Be sure to click at the top of the 3D view to Read More about the image. These tours will make landforms real, culture come alive, and science a visual art form. As you introduce terms and place, use images! You could even use a tour as a writing prompt for poetry or descriptive writing. Include the link on your teacher web page for students to "tour the world" outside of class or feature one location a week to broaden class horizons on a classroom desktop.

Comments

What a GREAT idea! Thank you. I found one with mountain biking and vistas. I'll put it up early in the period and come back to it in the end and have them write their exit cards about it. Then I will revisit it in a week or two when we start talking about metaphorical language.Shirley, CA, Grades: 6 - 12

I plan to use this as a way to start the school year with my sixth grade G/T kids. I will display a panorama on an interactive whiteboard-- one of mountains with peaks and valleys. I will ask, "Why would I show you this and say that this is our classroom this year?" The students will write down an idea on a slip of paper, guessing why I might use this as an introduction to my class. They will most likely introduce all of the classroom conduct and learning environment issues that I want to touch upon that first day: peaks and valleys during the year, some rugged terrain, studying mountains and geography, some amazing views (everyone's opinions), and more. It will also get them thinking in analogies and allow me to see how quickly some of them do this and how literal others are.Thinking, PA, Grades: 5 - 10

This lesson focuses on the content and style of development in Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and explores the nature of Tom Sawyer as a youthful "American Adam." Offered in seven 45-minute lesson plans, this site has great activities, particularly for 8th and 9th graders. It incorporates Twain's classic with a humanities angle that gives students a broader view of what education and life were like in the mid-19th century in America.

In the Classroom

Use portions of these lessons; then allow students to choose among the various project options, perhaps using multiple intelligence approach to facilitate their choices.

This lesson plan enables students to identify characteristics that are common to heroes, recognize heroes from many diverse cultures, and discuss how heroes can be any type of person who has accomplished an inspiring action. It offers this in nine 45-minute class lessons. The instructional objectives make it easy to pick and choose which lessons you want to do in the order in which you want to do them. It offers a great, classic base of Aristotelian hero qualities while also enabling you to bring the idea of hero forward into modern times.

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The links on the site itself offer ways to let students investigate on the web themselves at safe sites. Share the links as part of a web treasure hunt asking students to collect characteristics of heroes on their own and put them in a collaborative graphic organizer. What a great start to a heroes unit---one that you can revisit and add to throughout the unit. At the end of the unit, let them use the class organizer as the basis for their own "design a hero" challenge instead of a test.

Wow - this resource is amazing! This website provides numerous activities and/or games for extra practice in literacy, math, science, history, geography, art, and religion. Some examples of the specific activities include, "Saving the Environment", "Fraction Monkeys", and "Ancient Egypt". The site provides a huge amount of topics and a wide range of activities. Note: The site is British, so beware of spelling differences!

In the Classroom

This website would be an excellent resource to use with an interactive whiteboard. You may also want to provide this link on your teacher web page for parents to use at home. Nearly all subject areas (and topics) are included. Do yourself a favor - and utilize this excellent resource! Learning support teachers will love the opportunities for their students to get extra practice.

Amazing! This site uses a highly-accurate Flash representation of the complete muscular and skeletal structure of the human face and head in an interactive tool. The parts are all labeled (probably enough for a med student), but then the user can make them move to understand how they work. You will find yourself looking far more closely at any facial expression after you play with this for a few minutes. The tool is available in both Spanish and English. Don't miss the sliders that make the skull or muscles show more beneath the "skin." You MUST have Flash to see this site. Get it from the TeachersFirst Toolbox page..

In the Classroom

Teach figure drawing (head and face) by exploring this tool on laptops or an interactive whiteboard. If you teach anatomy or even athletic training/physiology, the detail of the anatomical illustration is amazing. Creative writers can use the emotion descriptors at the right to learn how to SHOW characters' emotions in their writing by explaining what their faces do instead of TELLING readers how the characters feel. Spanish teachers and ESL teachers may want to use the facial expressions to teach words that describe emotions. Other teachers-- even those who teach emotional or autistic support-- could use the facial expression of emotions to help students who have poor social skills recognize what someone else is feeling or build vocabulary of "feeling words." Speech clinicians interested in showing students how to form sounds (for articulation) will love this site, as will their students!

This craft and activity site for elementary children has links to excellent craft sites as well as a rotating feature of current interest. For example, in June, activities on Father's day are in the forefront as well as summer craft fun. Other subjects of interest for kids and parents include lunch box ideas, a music/song feature, party ideas, games,and recipes. There are advertisements (designated as "Ads by Google"), so you will want to navigate the site together to prevent getting stuck in commercialism! Look for the word "Activity" for links to the actual ideas.

In the Classroom

Make this site available to parents and students from your teacher web page for vacation periods and birthday party ideas. Your students and parents will thank you! You may find that some of the craft ideas fit in well with classroom themes, as well.

All about sports: top sports news stories, sports polls, displays of readers' artwork, AND MORE, this site is sure to appeal to those reluctant readers and any sports lover. Users can get up-to-date statistics from the NBA, NFL, MLB, and NBA. Readers can enjoy sports jokes.This site requires Flash. Get them from the TeachersFirst Toolbox page..

In the Classroom

Share this site on your teacher web page or classroom desktop for fast student access to sport statistics and a way to submit creative works. Use sports statistics for math practice and to teach graphing or data organization skills. Use the sports stories as non-fiction examples for reading comprehension. Share a Top Story on your interactive whiteboard as you ask students to highlight parts of speech, cause-effect words, main idea, and more. Suddenly your students will actually READ!

This lesson plan examines the occurrence of Fibonacci numbers popularized by the book and movie The Da Vinci Code. By examining relationships between numbers of petals and other plant parts in fruits, vegetables, trees, and flowers, students begin to take note of the frequency of occurrence of the famed numbers. Students learn plant identification, data recording, research methods, and drawing conclusions based on findings in this fascinating, multi-disciplinary approach.

In the Classroom

Use your digital camera and real plants to collect and observe and a spreadsheet to track and calculate. Even better, use an online collaborative spreadsheet such as InstaCalc for students to enter data from home and school. You may get them hooked on noticing something about nature when they are outside.

This multi-level lesson plan for ESL students offers opportunities for vocabulary development, reading, writing, and cultural sharing by responding to stories and books about kites. Primary grade tecahers could also use it in a unit on weather or as an interdisciplinary science/language arts activity. Because of its high interest level, it motivates students to participate in understanding new words and in expressing their ideas about the books they read and the techniques and history of kite flying in their countries. Students also read and talk about kite safety rules and examine websites about kites. Writing opportunities include writing rules,original stories, cultural histories haiku, and diamante poems. Students also get to design, make, decorate and fly their own kites.

In the Classroom

Plan a kite day in the fall or spring and use all or part of these plans to learn new words, build kites, and even fly them before you write about them. This would be a terrific activity to include parents at school year's end.

This website provides ready-to-go PowerPoint presentations. There are well over twenty presentations on topics related to the visual arts and performing arts. Some of the specific topics include music careers, music and culture, rock-n-roll USA, art, impressionism, ceramics, art history and many others. Most of the PowerPoints are extremely well done, featuring graphics, sound, and a wide selection of information. You may need to have PowerPoint software on your computer to view these files, depending on how the site creators saved them.

In the Classroom

Try these ready-to-go PowerPoint presentations on an interactive whiteboard or projector in your classroom. Some may also be well-suited for individual students to run on a single classroom computer for individua; exploration. There are games, resources and a lot of information.

The site includes a disclaimer asking to be notified if users find any unauthorized, copyrighted material. TeachersFirst recommends that you NOT download copies but instead use them online, just in case.

This bi-lingual site (English and Spanish) contains brief, colorful explanations of air pollution, air quality, dirty air, etc. as well as discussions of air's effects on health and the answers to questions about the future of air cleanliness. A link to two games about the subjects requires the Flash plug in. Get it from the TeachersFirst Toolbox page..
A link for teachers offers printable and html versions of related materials as well as games and printable posters.

In the Classroom

Print out the AQ posters and post one in the classroom each day so students remain informed about that day's air quality. Share the AQI Game Show on an interactive whiteboard as a review after the class has learned about air quality.

This online web activity challenges students to become a 1940s art detective! A mysterious woman needs help identifying the artist of a painting that she finds in her grandfather's attic. Students must examine the art using concepts including style, subject, and composition. Watch for the exciting twist at the end of this unique mystery.

In the Classroom

This website includes a link for teacher resources. There is also a printable worksheet(and answer key) that can be used to assess your students' knowledge and understanding of the activity. So get your interactive whiteboard pr projector ready - and turn your classroom into detective headquarters!

Find a cliche and ideas for better ways to say the same thing using this simple blog site. The directions at the right (HOW TO SEARCH THIS PAGE USING INTERNET EXPLORER) tell you everything you need to know to locate a specific cliche and some terrific alternates to the overused expression. Many of the examples are also taught as idioms.

In the Classroom

Introduce the site to your students on a projector os interactive whiteboard. Then have them work individually or in groups to write some of their own alternatives. Use the whiteboard to write new ideas! You could even start your own class wiki to include cliches students encounter in everyday conversation and in readings along with their suggestions for alternatives. Give extra credit for new additions students make on their own! Keep the link to Cliche a Day on your teacher web page as a reference for student writing assignments throughout the year.

Art teachers and social studies teachers alike will love this well-organized site filled with images, lesson plans, and activities to use at home and at school. Click on a collection for lesson plans, family activities, and numerous images. There is also an interactive world map to accompany the collection so you can click to see where different artworks originated. The collections include: African American Art; American Art to 1900; Ancient Indian Art of the Americas; Arts of Africa; Impressionism and Postimpressionism; India, Himalayas and Southeast Asia; Modern and Contemporary Art; Renaissance and Baroque Art; Rococo to Realism.

In the Classroom

Take a few minutes to explore the art of a continent, country, or time period you introduce through social studies or literature. Include this site on your teacher web page as you study these related topics to students and parents can access it outside of class even if you do not have enough time to devote a full lesson. The images are not very large, so viewing on individual computers or using a projector that has a zoom function would help you share with a class. Teachers will like the creativity of some of the "family" activities and may want to use them at school or suggest them in a newsletter or on your web page.

If Blogspot sites are not blocked in your school, you can visit this artist's blog (actually a cluster of them) to see a new painting every few days, watch videos of how paintings were made, or click over to his oil painting Process blog to see the steps in that process. Although the site is intended for the artist to sell his paintings, his willingness to share his process and works will give your students a window into an artist's creativity and use of materials.

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Share the site on a projector or interactive whiteboard as you introduce painting techniques or art elements. Look for common themes or techniques in his work. If you have an interactive whiteboard, students can even "draw" on top of the works to show what they see or analyze movement, shape, and line. As a class, you may want to comment back to the artist. If you do this together as a teacher-controlled entry, you can protect student safety on the Internet while participating in dialog with the artist, a real-world "expert."

Videos use YouTube and may be blocked on your school network. Test the site at school before counting on it for a lesson plan! If you are able to show the "Ice Cream" video, your students will really SEE painting in progress with kid-friendly subject matter!

This Discovery Channel site features a speculative exploration of King Tut's death. There is a nice narrated slide show that recreates the discovery of the tomb, a 360 degree view of an artist's conception of what King Tut may have looked like, and some nice photos of artifacts from the tomb.

In the Classroom

There is much here that would be great on an interactive whiteboard or projector. The narrated slide show brings the excitement of the tomb's discovery to life. While the discussion of King Tut's possible assassination is pure speculation, it will also serve to spark students' imagination. If you study archaeology or ancient history, this site will give you a chance to discuss the inquiry/hypothesis-testing process that archaeologists must follow.

From an international site of author biographies, this is a good one about Montgomery. It gives a good, reliable overview (although not in-depth) biography as well as a chronological listing of all her published works.

This site contains lesson plans and use suggestions for 5 classic movie favorites. It also has ideas for using those annoying movie previews found on DVDs and links to other sites about specific movies. Lessons include pre-watching activities, vocabulary support, internet exercises, and listening activities, so this site is highly appropriate for use with limited English speakers. Whether you are teaching film study, English, or ESL, this site has ideas for you.

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Use the movie previews lessons to teach about genre and setting in this visual artform, then draw connections to literature you read. As you complete a literary work, ask students how they would present it visually, using the same principles they discover from this site.